Equality

1
Equality

• We hold these truths to be self evident, that
  all men are created equalDeclaration of Indep.
• ..No state shall deny any person.the equal
  protection of the laws14th amendment

2
The Constitution and Equality

• Constitution initially is silent on the issue of
  equality..slaveswomen?
• 14th amendment inserts equality into the
  Constitution by stating that no state shall
  deny any person within its jurisdiction the
  equal protection of the laws..
• Since the 14th amendment there has been a fairly
  consistent pattern of expansion of equality to
  more groups such as African-Americans and women.

3
Civil Rights Equality for All?

• Refers to government-protected rights of
  individuals against arbitrary or discriminatory
  treatment by governments or individuals based on
  categories such as
• race,
• sex,
• national origin,
• age,
• religion
• or sexual orientation.

4
Constitutional Amendments

• Civil War Amendments
• Thirteenth Specifically bans slavery in the
  United States.
• Ratified by Southern states as a condition of
  their readmission to the Union after the war
• But the southern states used black codes to
  restrict opportunities for newly-freed slavesno
  voting rights,etc.
• Fourteenth Guarantees equal protection and due
  process of the laws to all U.S. citizens. (p.
  201.), Fifteenth Specifically enfranchised
  (granted voting rights) to newly-freed male
  slaves. What about women?

5
Civil Rights, Congress, and the Supreme Court

• Jim Crow laws segregation
• Enacted by southern states, these laws
  discriminated against blacks by creating whites
  only schools, theaters, hotels and other public
  accommodations.
• Civil Rights Cases (1883)
• The Supreme Court decided that discrimination in
  a variety of public accommodations (theaters,
  hotels, and railroads) could not be prohibited by
  the act because it was private, not state,
  discrimination. A private theater, for example.
• Moral reinforcement for the Jim Crow
  systemimplicit endorsement of discrimination

6
Civil Rights, Congress, and the Supreme Court

• The 15th Amendment did not guarantee suffrage it
  simply said that states could not deny anyone the
  right to vote on account of race or color.
  Sosouthern states created other barriers.
• Poll taxes
• Property requirement
• Literacy or understanding tests
• Grandfather clause

7
The Push for Equality

• Progressive Era (1890-1920)
• Concerted effort to reform political, economic,
  and social affairs
• Child labor, monopolies of economic power,
  limited suffrage, political corruption, prejudice
  were targets.
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
• Court found that separate but equal
  accommodations on trains did not violate the
  equal protection of the Fourteenth Amendment.

8
Key Womens Groups

• 1890 National and American Women Suffrage
  Associations merged
• New organization National American Women
  Suffrage Association
• Headed by Susan B. Anthony
• Focused on securing suffrage primarily
• Helped by mushrooming of womens groups
• Temperance, workforce rules, sanitation, public
  morals, education, and so forth
• National Consumers League 8-hour work day
• Muller v. Oregon (1908)
• 19th Amendment (1920) guaranteed women the right
  to vote

9
Litigating for Equality

• 1930s NAACP launched full-scale challenge in
  federal courts
• Focus on Plessy decision
• Test cases
• Jim Crow in schools
• Supreme Court More emphasis on individual
  freedoms and personal liberties
• Gaines case Court ordered Missouri to either
  admit Gaines to the school or set up a law school
  for him.
• NAACP created separate legal defense fund.

10
Litigating for Equality

• Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
• Decision holding that school segregation is
  inherently unconstitutional because it violates
  the Fourteenth Amendments guarantee of equal
  protection, only way to equalize the schools was
  to integrate them.
• Marked the end of legal segregation in the United
  States
• Plessys separate but equal doctrine was
  unconstitutional under the equal protection
  clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
• How would Brown be interpreted and implemented?

11
The Civil Rights Movement

• School Desegregation
• 1955 case SC said states must desegregate with
  All deliberate speed
• Little Rock Central High School
• Confrontation between state and federal
  government.
• Gov. of Alabama sent in NG troops to prevent
  black children from integrating a school, federal
  troops sent in to enforce court decision

12
A New Move for African American Rights

• Rosa Parks challenged segregated bus system
• Was arrested for violating Alabama law banning
  integration of public facilities, including buses
• Initiated boycott of buses
• Martin Luther King, Jr. a new, 26-year old
  minister, selected to lead the newly formed
  Montgomery Improvement Association
• Montgomery officials and businesses began to
  harass African Americans.
• Court ordered that city buses must integrate.
• Emergence of nonviolent protest in civil rights
  movement

13
Formation of New Groups

• Martin Luther King Jr. launched the Southern
  Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957.
• Had a southern base
• Rooted closely in black religious culture
• Importance of nonviolent protest and civil
  disobedience
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
• Offshoot of SCLC, but more of a grassroots
  organization
• Perceived as more radical
• Freedom rides

14
Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Leading to the legislation
• Kennedy request on banning discrimination in
  public accommodations
• March on Washington led by King
• I Have a Dream speech. Aug. 1963.
• Kennedy assassinated, November 1963.
• Johnson, southern-born VP, put civil rights on
  top of his agenda as new president.
• Opposition from Strom Thurmondlongest filibuster
  in history of Senate (8 weeks)
• Public opinion changes (southern attitudes),
  southerners come to accept integration

15
Civil Rights Act of 1964

• The legislation, once passed
• Outlawed arbitrary discrimination in voter
  registration and expedited voting rights
  lawsuits.
• Barred discrimination in public accommodations
  engaged in interstate commerce.
• Authorized the Department of Justice to initiate
  lawsuits to desegregate public facilities and
  schools.
• Provided for the withholding of federal funds
  from discriminatory state and local programs.
• Prohibited discrimination in employment on
  grounds of race, color, religion, and national
  origin, or sex.
• Created the Equal Employment Opportunity
  Commission (EEOC) to monitor and enforce the bans
  on employment discrimination.

16
Impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Lawsuits quickly emerged to challenge the act.
• Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality.
• Education
• Supreme Court ruled that all state-imposed
  segregation (de jure (by law) discrimination)
  must be eliminated at once.
• Employment
• Title VII prohibits discrimination in workplace.
• Employers could not use height and weight
  requirements for example for hiring decisions.

17
The Womens Rights Movement

• Litigation for Equal Rights
• Hoyt v. Florida (1961)
• Trial by all-male jury acceptable
• Decision reversed in 1975
• Kennedy creates Presidents Commission on the
  Status of Women
• Report, American Women (1963) documented
  pervasive discrimination against women
• Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique (1963)
• National Organization for Women (NOW)
• Equal Rights Amendment
• Strong movement on ratification halted by Roe v.
  Wade decision.

18
The Equal Protection Clause and Constitutional
Standards of Review

• 14th Amendment protects all U.S. citizens from
  state action that violates equal protection of
  the laws.
• Rational basis or minimum rationality test
• Heightened standard required when
• First Amendment rights or suspect classifications
  such as race are involved.
• Strict scrutiny
• Reed v. Reed (1971)
• Craig v. Boren (1976)

19
Violations of the Fourteenth Amendment

• Single-sex public nursing schools
• Laws that consider males adults at 21 but females
  at 18
• Laws that allow women but not men to receive
  alimony
• Virginias maintenance of an all-male military
  college
• Contrast Court has upheld the following
• Draft registration provisions for males only.
• State statutory rape laws that apply only to
  female victims.

20
Statutory Remedies for Sex Discrimination

• Title VII prohibits discrimination by private
  and(after 1972) public employers.
• Key victories under Title VII
• Consideration of sexual harassment as sex
  discrimination.
• Inclusion of law firms, which many argued were
  private partnerships, in the coverage of the act.
• A broad definition of what can be considered
  sexual harassment, which includes same-sex
  harassment.
• Allowance of voluntary affirmative action
  programs to redress historical discrimination
  against women.

21
Statutory Remedies for Sex Discrimination

• Title IX
• Provision of the Educational Amendments of 1972
  that bars educational institutions receiving
  federal funds from discriminating against female
  students
• Key victories under Title IX
• Holding school boards or districts responsible
  for sexual harassment of students by teachers

22
Other Groups Mobilize for Rights

• Hispanic Americans
• Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational
  Fund
• Expand voting rights and political opportunities
• Native Americans
• genocide by law isolation
• Dawes Act in 1887
• Litigation hunting, fishing, land rights and
  access to sacred places, religious freedom
• Gays and Lesbians
• Advantaged in terms of education and income
  status
• Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
• Lesbian Rights Project
• Romer v. Evans (1996)
• Lawrence v. Texas (2003)
• Disabled Americans
• Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)

23
Continuing Controversies in Civil Rights

• Affirmative Action
• Policies designed to give special attention or
  compensatory treatment to members of a previously
  disadvantaged group
• Bakke case
• Other decisions found that a factory and union
  could voluntarily adopt a quota system in
  selecting black workers over more senior white
  workers for a training program.
• Union workers were outraged. Left Democratic
  Party to vote for Reagan in 1980.
• Reagan took political stand against affirmative
  action.
• Court generally stood by the process, but has
  moved to limit such programs and make it harder
  to prove employment discrimination.

24
Recent Controversies

• Gay rights and Cracker Barrel
• Cracker Barrel chain discriminated against
  homosexuals by requiring that employees exhibit
  heterosexual values on the job.
• The restaurant adopted a new anti-discrimination
  policy that included protections for sexual
  orientation.
• Wal-Mart
• Gender discrimination Claim that women were paid
  lower wages and offered fewer opportunities for
  advancement than males.
• June 2004, a federal judge broadened the suit to
  include 1.6 million women in a class action law
  suit.
• Ethnic origin discrimination Claim by 9 illegal
  immigrants who worked as janitors that Wal-Mart
  paid them lower wages and gave them fewer
  benefits based on their ethnic origin.
• Another group claimed that Wal-Mart knowingly
  hired illegal immigrants and in doing so violated
  the workers civil rights by refusing to pay
  Social Security and other wage compensation
  benefits.